Peter Minter: Feral habitus

Peter Minter is one of the greatest poets I read, and one of the greatest poets I know. I regard him, his conversation, his attention, his criticism, his aesthetics and his ethics as militantly tender, tenderly militant. Minter is uncompromising and committed in the things he makes and does, and his politics are manifest in his making and doing, interfacing variously with discourses and methodologies of an eco-anarchist left. As well, he is interested in relation and encounter, whether enacted through romantic love, creaturely relations, community action, activism, critique, skill-sharing, meal-sharing, etc. His particular relational affect is quiet, precise, concerned, intuitive, understated and dead-on.

In July 2011, Michael Brennan published an 'interview' with Minter for "Australia -- Poetry International Web," an online resource collecting extended interviews and works by poets. The interview is not so much an exchange as an extended response to a set of questions presented to Minter by Brennan. Rather than answering each question discretely, Minter's written response is a critical exegesis of his poetics that treats, in some way, each of Brennan's provocations. I mention this because it is by far the best primer for Minter's work and critical stance. Read it here.

Minter’s contribution to poetics (in Sydney, in Australia, in the Milky Way) is enormous. As the editor of journals and anthologies, as the curator of reading series and the publisher of occasional collections, as a scholar in Aboriginal and Australian literature at the Koori Centre in the University of Sydney, and as an active and attentive member of communities, Minter has contributed, for decades, to conversations around poetics, aesthetics, indigenous history, culture, praxis and politics. Minter was founding editor (with Adrian Wiggins) of Cordite Poetry and Poetics Review (now an online magazine edited by David Prater). He was the co-editor (with Michael Brennan) of Calyx: 30 Contemporary Australian Poets, published by Paper Bark Press in 2000. In 2008, he was the co-editor (with Anita Heiss) of the Macquarie PEN Anthology of Aboriginal Literature. He is a former poetry editor of Meanjin and the current poetry editor of Overland.

You can see traces of mid-twentieth-century America in Minter’s methodology for making – Olson, Duncan, Levertov, HD, Creeley, Williams, and other moments and coteries that dealt with the shifting, ecstatic, and catastrophic events of post-war internationalisms and its attendant macro-micro optic vacillations. There are also strains of the New-Romantic 1980s, as perceived by a teenage Minter in Newcastle, a steel mill city on the Australian east coast. There’s sci-fi in there too, with its tropic cues exacting specific fantasies and paranoias of post-cold-war bomb-oblivion. And it's queer, where queerness is a strategy for reading and positing a thoroughly multitudinous and anti-essentialist approach to imaging social and political relations. As a critic and commentator, Minter works against monoculturalism, neocolonialism, mediocrity, egomania, revisionist histories, rhetorics of ownership, entitlement, individualism and economic rationalism. Recently, he spoke out against the just-published anthology, AustralianPoetry Since 1788, co-edited by Geoffrey Lehmann and Robert Gray. You can see a video of Minter’s paper on the anthology in Michael Farrell’s excellent commentary piece here on J2.

Minter is a fastidious archivist, and he has collected and organised all of his material from a very young age in boxes. He was kind enough to let me fossick through and harvest some nuggets for this post. The boxes included comprehensive records of his editorial, curatorial, and personal projects, including very early and yet-unpublished poems, which Minter has kindly OK’d for publication here. It also included a tiny book that Minter made in 1984 during high school that is heavily influenced by photocopied chaps he found in record shops in Sydney. He told me that he and his friends would occasionally get the train to Sydney to get haircuts, stock up on kung fu sandals and dig through the records and cassettes in the music shops on Pitt Street. There, they found pre-zine-culture magazines that were coming out of the UK punk scene, and they emulated the format in an edition called Altermatum Motivation. The cover image of an issue of Altermatum is featured at the beginning of this post.

The following files have been scanned and gifted by Minter. Many thanks to him for his time and generosity.

1. Altermatum Motivation, 1984, p.3-4

2. "On the Beach," a poem by Minter, written while in high school, and published in Young Hunter, a collection of poetry by young people in the Hunter Valley region of New South Wales.

3. Peter Minter, "the world up until now," written 1988-89, when Minter was an undergraduate at the University of Sydney. This poem is previously unpublished.

"the world up until now"

i

of all that could possibly happen,this that happened was the rightthing, being necessarily ambiguous.

and they were saying “there isnothing at all to fear, we are goingto be with you, all the way. just

relax, there will be nothing, nothingat all to worry about.” the historytree vanishes back into itself every

hour of the day, its leavesgrowing smaller as they float slowlyto the shifting, hesitant ground.

from here, the world isso much wider than it everseemed to all and such as we.

iihow long has it been sinceyou arrived, fresh faced and

leaner than the sky? can youremember anything or does it

hardly matter that behind thoseholy marks you’re falling backward

motionlessly, through the schemaof life? can this be called

honesty, a body conductingevery word with its hollow

Shiva arms? this is an evergrowing dialogue, its paths can

take you anywhere, like an areaon the surface that develops silently,

a blindspot in a grassy place thatwhispers sweet nothing to itself.

iii

there is a city, somewherebehind the trees, in the wind.

we were there before, lyingin the ground, covered by roads,

sitting in the score of the worldwithout a single picture

or phrase that was magicallystraight to the point.

iv

you can go fishing and seein the fishes’ emerald gaze how itreally is under water. at such

times, at night, a wave of orangein the grotto of the lookout, thebird of fire on guitar and you say

that there are children, preparingfor the end. the cliff is civilized to thepoint that it speaks ancient greek

and we, the last listeners, are asclouds, forming ourselves from without. and the tree, overlooking

everything, is tangled in the windthat sinks and pulls itself throughthe taught and difficult matter of seasons.

v

sitting here, and the roomreassures itself that it is simplya contracted immediacy, allowing

the flow of the traffic to sound inthrough the window. there are nomore cigarettes, though someone

is sure to bring some, sooneror later. an overabundanceof things can make you forget

how long it has been since youcame here and sat, waiting to seethe objects rise up with some

kind of recognition of themselves.hopefully it will be easy, cutting adriftthem from “them”, though in the back

of our minds we know that nothingis as easy as at first it seems. allwe desire is: a hint of the facts,

and to be floating in an all-whiteclarity, subject of nothing, not evenwords and their stale orchestralness.

vi

we can almost hear you, circlingin the currents, the incessant days.its a marvellous way to die — imagine!

the randomness of the notes that playthe music in your head growing closer, closer‘till they ripple in and outward over everything.

vii

from such a perspective the worldmoves beyond itself, not a singlethought, just being at a locus,

a circularity of vowels that passsong like through the world’s inarticulatetheme, its moments of careful indecision.

the vessel, colour of oak, the onethat never sees nor hears thecoming questions, is finally dissolved.

viii

it was always morningas we left the fields. the

sky in the room was blueon that winter’s day. from

outside these yellow wallsyou hear a dog, barking. perhaps

he is chained to a tree, in apool of glinting dust.

ix

sleep and dreams become a wayof feeling the real weight of the futureas it grows like thick burgandy sap.

there is never any tense to suchoccurrences, just the ebb of silentsummer and cool running water flashing

over rocks and lapping at the tediouslyintricate traces left by creeping shells.and it is difficult to decipher the images,

though they come, hands tied behindour backs. it has something to dowith the reproduction of opposites,

a voice that pushes you down intothe waiting earth, that lets youknow where every meaning must lie.

x

it is sunday evening and we shufflearound with pockets full of change, makingthings to eat, listening to things

that happen on the radio. theytalk of bringing life back in order,giving it a more definite kind

of nature. so that is the way of itthen, the sudden reversal of the terms,the fascination of the effect.

xi

quivering in hollow ditches, goldfishcaught in seaweed nets from the settling,

humming air. we are standing by, we arewondering – why, as the season lost itself

amongst the mild, flowering trees, did thecat leave the tails and scales?

xii

from the mouth of the scarecrowfall bulging pockets of words. he

must be nearly empty inside – thebirds fly, circling above, waiting

for his fall into the mere colourof his clothes. the grasses shimmer

and grow between everything. an oldtree shudders in an air that

breathes slowly in fromthe gradually sinking hills.

xiii

they come with documents to signthat leave you without a singleresponsibility. your house is getting

so wide it may soon be of naturalproportions. all that will be left –a chair, a small table, maybe

some magazines, you could evenhave them leave your papers anda pen – all will appear both in

and out of focus, both cause and effect.so, this is it, after yearsof uncontrived engagement, where

days were full and fully collectedthemselves and nights wrote diarieson the finely tuned curves

of the satellites, as they slipped andfell, without loss of energy, acrossits thick, expansive black pages.

xiv

over and over, at this time of theyear, the days begin to outnumberthe nights, again. some people

will be thinking of the bigcleaning out – so this is it!they cry as they kick the screen

door open with their left foot andthrow a box full of clothes and coloured ashesout into somewhere out there.

xv

it is, so same have cometo mention on stormy afternoons,

a strange occasion, this life. asstrange as pulling apart a boat,

piece by piece, while out on the centreof a lake. disturbances like this

come as cool reminders, first sippedwith hesitation, then poured into the body

with an enthusiasm that is surethe more is taken away, the lighter

the space will appear. the fluidityis almost blinding, and the grasses

they are possessed with waves of clouds,with waves and signs of recognition.

4. Peter Minter, "Mosquito Sleep. Island of Formosa." written 1988-89, when Minter was an undergraduate at the University of Sydney. This poem is previously unpublished.

"Mosquito Sleep. Island of Formosa."

sleeping round in the countryside often leavesour heads quivering with mosquitoes. afternoons arethen like dreams: they never find their middlecaught between the beginning and the end;there’s just the glowing immanence. this iswhere the head likes to rest itself, unwind,uncurl itself as would a snake; there, it is watching.

could be lying out there on that rock, waitingfor that wave to finally wash our skins from ourselves.

these hardened branches, autumn clinging tothe clothes with twigs and disturbances, adieing spectre that rests into the ocean waves.from here it is still a little hard to see, thoughsometimes the planes that cruise in over the waterhang like slowly falling moons and glow acrossthe wandering black space.

an old story tells us that years and years ago whalesonce came to this rock and in the morningthey beached themselves and made thunderin the sand that now shiftsunder the weight of the experience.in a context such as this we are madetotally unmanageable — it reminds us of our childhood.it reminds us of someone we onceknow who disappeared across the edgeinto the waves. and the rocks areof such odd shapes. they have no real positions.they have no real names.

if this island were to crumble away we wouldneed to find a way of winning over nothing.on the ends of ourselves we are dancingthis confusion — we have seen all the steps to betaken in life and this poisonous knowledge aimsitself at our stomachs, and we are dancingthis confusion with our lives in our hands.

if we could see into the centre we may seea hole of white coming from about; it ishovering here just below us. if we happento dive inside it we swim like fishround and round in a hollow green savannawhere everything needs painting, whereeverything needs to rest.

these forms, accumulating gradually, leave shapesand instances of themselves. it doesn’t matterhow they look or what they mean. you cansee it in their eyes; they know a language madeof pictures that have their origins on bones,a matrix of suspicion making sculptures in words,the movement of fingers, the pixillating blink.

in the middle of the night black ibisisseek the words that lie hiddendeep within our ears. they have comefrom nowhere and the reasons for theirinterest in such things are uncertain. theibisis always fly home high above thebeaches, wide angled as clouds.

when we speak together we like to make upstories, we like to plan our escape — there is littletime left to go before this rock disappearsand takes all the heaviness of the surrounding landwith it. other times we lie together, dreamingthat the sky will shortly speakto sculpt is lean.

5. Drafts and final versions of the "Varuna New Poetry Broadsheet." Minter published these broadsheets to correspond with the reading series he curated at the Varuna Writers Centre in Katoomba (1994-1998).

6. Drafts from Empty Texas, Minter's first full-length poetry book, published by Paper Bark Press in 1999 (a smaller folio containing some of the poems had been published under the same title by Salt the previous year.) These drafts represent only a fraction of the paper-edits made by Minter for each poem in the collection. These drafts were composed and revised during 1997.

This project is an archival attempt; I want to try to construct a loose and pliable index of poetry and poetics in Sydney, Australia, collecting materials that have otherwise gone uncollected in official anthological and historical constructs. I have a whiff of what I might find: correspondence, eight-tracks, letterpressed posters, journals, documents of protest, recordings and photographs of pre-pokie Sydney pubs, gardens clotted with poets necking shandies. My sense is that there is a tendency in Sydney to erase the archive -- to assume that the new is built on neutral remains. No doubt this is a tendency traceable to the chronic traumas of unsettlement. And it affects the possibilities for a collaborative and reiterative poetics drawing on moments of collective rabbling, and the true nutting-out of tiny territories for thinking. Sydney's official poetry avatar ritualistically produces anthologies that never really leave the first map-point of the harbour. There must be countless other treats, nooked and spreading everywhere.

Astrid Lorange is in the final throes of a dissertation on Gertrude Stein. The dissertation is an index, with a series of microessays functioning as annotated entries, connected laterally in categories, sub-categories and sub-sub-categories. The index will be designed to be used to read Stein within a specific, curated set of 'other' texts including Whitehead, Wittgenstein, Lucretius, Serres, Stengers, and an optic heavily designed by poet-critics working in contemporary contexts. Astrid lives in Sydney. She is the author of Eating and Speaking and the forthcoming Minor Dogs, and her PDF book Pussy pussy pussy what what (Au lait day Au lait day) is available for free download at Gauss-PDF.com

If you would like to contact me, about these posts or anything else, please do! astrid [dot] p [dot] lorange [at] gmail [dot] com